Feeling aimless… Having goals – – what is that actually? Do plants have goals? They just grow in the rhythm of the year, multiply, stay for a summer – or 5000 years. They follow their nature. Do they have a goal that they follow? They grow, multiply and protect themselves. They overgrow the others to be able to grow and multiply better. But are they goals in the sense and of the kind we would understand as goals? Planning? Don’t plants simply follow the cycles of increase and decrease? The cycles of growth and decay? How long-term are their supposed goals? They did not choose the location. Do they have the goal of lasting 5000 years – or that of dying in the fall? Or do they simply follow their nature? From minute to minute of their existence. And with the animals: Isn’t the highest level of seemingly long-term purposeful planning gathering supplies for the winter? In the animal world, does anyone plan further than a seasonal cycle? And is that planning then, or is it also just a following of its own nature that leads the squirrel, in addition to eating, reproducing, holding its place, and raising young, to gather and hide food for the winter? Is it even in this activity even in the minute and then again in the next minute of its existence? Gathering – gathering – not gathering – gathering. Tick – tick – tick…. And also in winter, when it is looking for the nuts again, is it also only in the minute and the next minute of its existence? Looking – Looking – Not looking – Looking – Looking. Tick – Tick – Tick. One moment follows the other. Guided by its own nature. Isn’t this being then actually also aimless in the sense and the way we feel aimless when we reproach ourselves that we only live into the day? When we accuse ourselves of having no goals for our lives and drifting. Maybe we are not drifting and this word is only used in this phrase because „drifting“ implies loss of control and self-sacrifice with which the mind can cause us a bad feeling. A bad feeling that then forces us to return to its arms, because self-induced (willful!) uncontrolled drifting is highly undesirable and most severely socially sanctioned. A meaningful expression, which nips in the bud our going on and feeling on and perceiving on this way. This path is so taboo that at the slightest suspicion of „letting ourselves drift,“ we freeze, turn around, and look around, caught off guard, to make sure that no one has seen how close we have come to this forbidden border. In certain dictatorships, what almost happened to us was called „Republikflucht“. Crossing the border on our own authority and evading coercion and control – dictation. In certain dictatorships, such attempts were severely punished. Because, if one starts… where does it lead to?
Perhaps we could also replace „letting ourselves drift“ with „letting ourselves be led“ with regard to our fellow creatures, the plants and the animals. Perhaps we are actually led, which could follow their own nature, if this being led (the loss of control of the mind, the ego, the individual) would not be suggested to them as something negative and to be stopped as quickly as possible. The best way to stop it is to present ourselves and our fellow human beings with a rational life plan from today until our passing. Job, career, house, family, relationships, pension, unemployment insurance, extended private unemployment, health and pension insurance, sports for health, education through travel, individual expression through possessions, to-do list of renovations to the house, the places one still wishes to see and the things one still wishes to do. Planning one’s annual vacation, one’s funeral, and one’s previous lodging. If asked, one always has a clear (on target and quick as an arrow) answer ready and reaps benevolent nods. That’s right. He has everything under control. He thinks things through and has planned his life. Nothing can happen to him! He has goals and knows how to achieve them. – Well, yes. Everyone knows that this is nonsense. Yesterday I got a phone call and found out that an old friend died unexpectedly. He was my age almost to the month. Unexpectedly… Sometimes you also hear about banks cancelling loans, companies cancelling jobs, life partners cancelling relationships, children not wanting to speak to parents, bricks falling on heads, pension funds being looted, miscalculations on supplemental annuities, insurance not covering the exact damage you have, oh what else. Our system provides us with these uncertainties and many more. But it requires us to plan for the long term within these uncertainties as a tribute and ventriloquism to our sanity. It is a kind of worship that we perform with it. Oh! I get to do it again? How flattering! Well, let’s do it! I plan everything for you! There’s nothing I can’t do! Says then the mind and acts so modest and surprised and harmless.
Our society is so knitted that an existence in simple being is no longer possible. Something long-term must always be considered. And what has to be considered is, to make matters worse (maybe already by the fact that it is „long-term“), also far away from our natural existence. So it is not possible for us in our society to pay tribute to the limitedness of our material perceptions and possibilities, as plants and animals do, by dealing with the short-term things (which we are only able to grasp at all in our short-sightedness on a material level), with the individual cycles, which we can at least survey, simply because they are cycles that always return to their beginning. Like the year. We are forced to plan beyond our horizon. And against the nonsense, which we then get up to, we must then insure ourselves and answer for and overtax ourselves the rest of our life with it, to prevent these long-term constructs from collapsing… or to sweep up the heap of broken pieces until our death….
My perception is that the present moment exists because it is where we are meant to be physically, where we find our material existence and focus. As material beings, we have been virtually cast into this current moment with our bodies. Eternity and infinity are not recognizable in the physical. Thus, the past is not accessible to the body (matter, mind) and neither is the future. Even more: matter thus emerges from the mental aspect of the past, exists in the present moment and passes into the mental aspect of the future. Matter is therefore only another form of soul existence, which becomes perceptible to our five senses and our mind exactly and only in the current moment. Past and future are matter of our soul existence and this is then also the level on which must be „acted“ concerning past or future.
If we are with our existence as a „material“ human being at the moment, then we are where we belong with our five senses. Only our mind, which counts everything, including past and future, to its area of control, does not see it so. For him it is „aimless“. For him it is „drifting“. Loss of control. Self-sacrifice. That the „goals“ concerning past and future, are processed somewhere else, is not clear to him (or not convenient). That the leadership concerning eternity and infinity – because nothing else is what is commonly called past and future – cannot be in his hand, is not clear (or not acceptable) to him. So we are aimless for him just when we actually distribute the task planning and the responsibility for the achievement of the aim correctly.
Now exactly this ability of cognition distinguishes us from the animals and plants. Animals and plants act in the moment and the guidance of their existence lies in the beyond. They are not aware of it. They are. Plain and simple.
We as human beings have the ability to consciously experience these aspects. We have the ability to perceive the material phenomena and also the spiritual phenomena of our existence. We can separate and distinguish. Thus, our path is far from being over. Our mind – the tool of this becoming conscious, the tool which makes it possible for us to experience perception at all – yes, to let it arise actually only. To let the world come into being – still remains in one-sided material cognition and will always go wrong. Only when he opens himself also to the mental cognition, he can really recognize. Only when he adds being united to being separate, we are whole. Then the cycle has closed again and we have arrived in paradise again after the expulsion. One step further then. This time matured… in our realization, which is now whole.